For many Star Trek fans, Captain Picard — portrayed of course by Patrick Stewart on The Next Generation — will forever be remembered as the greatest captain the Starship Enterprise ever saw (though Captain Kirk fans would beg to differ), and there’s always been a desire to see Picard back in the captain’s chair once again. And while there are no current plans to make that happen, Stewart himself has a pretty good idea of how it could.
Speaking to Variety in a recent interview, the 77-year-old actor revealed that he hasn’t really thought about playing Picard again — it’s been 15 years since the last time he donned the uniform in Star Trek Nemesis — but stated that if he did, he knows how he’d like to see it go down. “Oh, lord. I cannot think of another instance in which that might happen,” he said of playing Picard again. “My feeling is I hung up the space suit and left all that behind a long time ago. Maybe if someone came up with a brilliant idea, I’d do it. One thing that might interest me would be to bring all the existing casts of Star Trek from the last 50 years together for one big story.”
That would certainly be a sight to see, though getting together the surviving members of The Original Series may be difficult at this point due to their ages — William Shatner is 86 — and the fact that many of them have passed on, including Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelly (Bones), and James Doohan (Scotty). Still, a multi-generational new Trek movie incorporating members of every single series — including Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, and the reboot films — would be a dream come true for many fans, and may even fit into the possibly time travel-related pitch that Quentin Tarantino is said to be developing for the franchise.
So Quentin, if you’re reading this, maybe go and have a chat with Patrick, hmm?
